The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry

by Tony Barnstone

  With the Manchu invasion and the death of the emperor, Gao's friends, who had lost their positions in the purge of 1593, began to come back to power between 1618 and 1620, and Gao was appointed to a series of important positions. Wei Zhongxian, a powerful eunuch, became his enemy and managed to purge him and many of his friends starting around 1624. Some were tortured to death, others sent to serve as common soldiers on the frontiers; Gao was allowed to return home to Wuxi but was made into a commoner. The Donglin Academy and others were denounced as subversive and ordered to be destroyed. When he learned that the imperial bodyguards were coming for him, he drowned himself in a pond on his family's estate. His name and those of the other Donglin victims were officially restored after the emperor's death.

  Idle in Summer

  I sit in meditation in the long summer,

  not a single word all day.

  You ask me how can I do that?

  My heart is at ease when I have nothing to do.

  Fishing boats are returning in fine drizzle,

  children are noisy in woods.

  Northern wind suddenly turns south,

  the sun sets behind a distant mountain.

  I feel happy at this scene

  and pour a drink to go with this great mood.

  Gulls fly away from the pond.

  In twos they keep coming back.

  XIE ZHAOZHE

  (1567–1624)

  Xie Zhaozhe was a poet, scholar, official, collector, and traveler who was descended from a military family from Jiangdian, Changlo, Fujian province, a coastal town facing the Straits of Taiwan, although Xie himself was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, where his father was employed as a teacher. Xie took and passed the regional and imperial examinations and became a judge in Huzhou, Zhejiang. He held a number of other positions in Nanjing and Beijing with the ministries of Justice, War, and Works, and was a prolific writer who was known to compose meditations on the practices and customs of the areas in which he worked. He wrote prose, essays, collections of anecdotes, and poetry, but his most important contribution is an encyclopedia titled Five Assorted Offerings, a famous portrait of his times that was very popular in Japan (it was banned in China by the Manchus in the eighteenth century). He was a freethinker and a skeptic and was critical of superstitions, footbinding, greed, and sexual excess.

  Spring Complaints

  Spring grass is rampant in the Changxin Palace1

  and sorrow slowly grows and grows

  since the emperor never comes here

  until it's high as the jade steps.

  1 The Changxin Palace is where the emperor's mother lived in the Han dynasty. This poem is written from the point of view of a palace maid, mourning the fact that the emperor leaves the women in his mother's palace untouched.

  YUAN HONGDAO

  (1568–1610)

  Descended from a military and scholarly family, Yuan Hongdao was one of three famous brothers who comprised what was known as the Gongan School, after the port town of Gongan (in present-day Hunan province) where they grew up. They celebrated the poetry of Bai Juyi and Su Shi and rejected the imitative poetry of their day. All three of the brothers passed the highest imperial exams. Yuan Hongdao was a magistrate known for his travel writings and poetry. In his correspondence and criticism he celebrated spontaneity and clarity in poetry. After his older brother died in 1600, he and his younger brother retired to an island in Willow Lake to study Zen with Buddhist monks, but in 1606 he returned to his official career at the Ministry of Rites and other departments. In addition to his poetry he wrote a play, a monograph on flower arrangement, a historical romance, two prose works on Buddhism, and a set of miscellaneous essays, observations, and meditations. He died at the age of forty-two.

  At Hengtang Ferry

  By the Hengtang Ferry, walking close to the water,

  you come from the west, and I'm going east.

  I'm not a singing girl

  but from big red houses with big names.

  I spit on you by accident when blowing away flowers.

  Thank you for returning my gaze.

  I live by the rainbow bridge,

  the red door at the crossroad.

  Just find the lily magnolia,

  but don't pass the poplars and plum trees.

  ANONYMOUS EROTIC POETRY, COLLECTED BY FENG MENGLONG

  (1574–1646)

  With the exception of “A Nun in Her Orchid Chamber Solitude Feels Lust Like a Monster” and “We're Only Happy About Tonight,” all of the anonymous erotic poems presented here were collected by Ming dynasty scholar Feng Menglong, who compiled them in a small collection of erotic folk verse called Mountain Songs (earlier he compiled a similar collection titled Hanging on Branches). Feng was a prolific writer, well known for his short stories. He was also one of the scholars of his time who showed a deep interest in folklore. He collected not only folk poems but also practical cultural artifacts and practices, such as different forms of letters, proper ways to address people, and strategies for winning in certain gambling games. In his preface to Mountain Songs he writes: “Folk songs are indeed very vulgar; however, aren't they the descendants of Zheng and Wei songs from the Book of Songs? Now we are in a deteriorated dynasty, there are phony poetry and essays, but no phony folk songs—this is because folk songs do not compete with poems and essays for a reputation, so there is no need to fake anything. Since they do not bother to be pretentious, I collect them to preserve authenticity. Isn't that something reasonable?”

  Untitled

  I open the door and see snowflakes flying night and day.

  Three layers of embroidered quilt cannot keep me warm.

  What I need is my man's hot belly.

  A Dragging Cotton Skirt

  The girl came back from the lane

  where her man had torn her sash,

  so she told her mom, “I have a pain in my stomach,”

  and walked bent over, hands held to her belly.

  Clever

  The mother is clever

  but the girl is clever, too.

  Mom used a sieve to spread lime on the floor,

  but the girl heaved her man up and carried him to bed

  and back again, the two sharing one pair of shoes.

  Lantern

  Having an affair is like a lantern;

  don't punch holes or rumors will blow it out.

  The woman tells the man,

  “You come in secret without a light

  but you ignite me inside

  and make all my body burn red.”

  The Bento Box **

  Having an affair is like a bento box;

  you can carry it with you like a wine warmer,

  but just enjoy the taste of one or two dishes.

  Don't work your chopsticks too much.

  Shooting Star

  Having an affair is like a shooting star.

  It penetrates the sky.

  The woman tells the man,

  “Whenever I see your fire I lust for you,

  but you go too soon, like smoke.”

  The Boat

  Having an affair is like a boat.

  You raise the sail and toss in the waves.

  The woman tells him,

  “I know how to handle these wind-and-water storms;

  keep a firm grip on the rudder and don't fall asleep.”

  A Boat Trip

  The man poles the boat.

  The woman rocks the boat.

  Playing with wind and tide,

  they make a choppy ride.

  She is an oar

  that depends on the rower to hit water.

  The more he uses his pole,

  the happier she is.

  A Nun in Her Orchid Chamber Solitude Feels Lust Like a Monster

  In her orchid chamber solitude

  her lust is a monster.

  She is too lazy to beat her wooden fish.1

  Her book of prayers is closed.

  She's in no mood
to chant mantras.

  As a nun she's suffered a thousand bitternesses,

  but when she gets old there's no guarantee of nirvana.

  “Sigh, I should find a handsome man while I'm still young.”

  We're Only Happy About Tonight

  We're happy, only happy about tonight.

  We're worried, only worried about parting tomorrow.

  Tonight two mandarin ducks grind against each other

  till all the plum flowers are gone.

  Now the drum tower beats midnight.

  Shadows on the window-gauze show the moon falling west.

  If only we could hold the moon up in our hands!

  * Bento box: a tray for presenting small dishes and appetizers, common in Japanese cuisine but originating in China.

  1 “Wooden fish” is a hollow drum used by Buddhist monks when chanting the canon.

  ZHANG DAI

  (1597–1684)

  Zhang Dai was a historian and essayist from Shanyin (Shaoxing), Zhejiang, born into a family of scholars and officials who lived lives of wealth and sensual pleasure. He was a tea connoisseur and like his family lived extravagantly, surrounded by elegant arts and fine antiques. After the 1644 Manchu invasion, however, things began to go badly for him. In 1646 his son was kidnapped by a military general who later pillaged Zhang's house and destroyed his property. In July of that year the Manchu invasion forced Zhang to flee to the mountains, where he lived like a hermit, penniless except for some books, and suffered hunger, cold, and poverty until his death. It was here, however, that he wrote two distinguished prose collections (a history of the Ming dynasty and a memoir of Ming society and practices) as well as other prose pieces.

  from Ten Scenes of the West Lake: Broken Bridge in Melting Snow

  A long bank and shade of a tall willow.

  Sparse moonlight sifts through.

  My feet step in the loose sand as if walking in snow.

  QING DYNASTY

  (1644–1911)

  DURING THE QING DYNASTY, CHINA WAS RULED BY THE Manchus, one of five Jurchen tribes that had conquered the other Jurchens and invaded China from Manchuria. A emarkable dynasty in many ways, the Qing lasted for 267 years and was very prosperous. It saw China expand to an immense size, annexing Taiwan, Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang province), Mongolia, Tibet, and Manchuria. Tribute was exacted from neighboring nations, and progressive tax policies encouraged land cultivation and agriculture. The nation's population swelled to 300 million by the end of the eighteenth century, and to 400 million by 1850.

  Weakened by corruption, rebellions, and warfare, the empire fell into economic trouble and had difficulty ruling and feeding its burgeoning population. Like their predecessors in the Ming dynasty, the Qing rulers maintained an isolationist foreign policy. But in a series of military actions, the imperialist powers of the West forced them to sign what came to be known as the “unequal treaties,” under which China became a semicolonized region, forced to cede territories, pay crippling tributes to the British, and open ports to Western traders. Notoriously, the British twice invaded China to force the Qing to allow them to continue their lucrative business importing Indian opium to China. Furthermore, Westerners were granted special status, immune from prosecution under Chinese law and with their own police and courts and system of taxation. These humiliating treaties diminished the moral authority of the government. The tributes drained Qing coffers, leading to an increase in taxes, which in turn led to dissent. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a series of rebellions by Muslims, fundamentalist Christians, martial artists (known in the West as the Boxers), and others were put down, but only after tens of millions of people were slaughtered. Local taxes to finance armies to suppress the rebellions led to a decentralization of power that further weakened the empire. The Manchu rule came to an end in 1911, when the last emperor of China, Pu I, was overthrown by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and the Republic of China was founded. The poetry of the anti-Manchu revolutionary and feminist Qiu Jin—though not of the highest literary quality—is particularly interesting in this context.

  During this period the novel made advances as a major Chinese genre, especially with the writing in the eighteenth century of The Dream of the Red Chamber (also called The Story of the Stone), a great and immensely long work that incorporated poetry. On the whole the Qing dynasty is not generally regarded as a period of great achievement in poetry. Like the Ming, the Qing was a difficult time for intellectuals. As in the beginning of the Yuan dynasty, many intellectuals refused to work for the new and foreign imperial order, choosing instead to find other employment. Intellectuals were often persecuted by the autocratic Manchus, and their works were sometimes banned or destroyed. It should come as no surprise, then, that much of Qing poetry tends to be imitative, like that of the Ming, safely emulating the literary achievements of the great Tang poets. As Zhao Yi writes in his poem “On Poetry,” “Li Bai's and Du Fu's poems have passed through ten thousand mouths/and now they are no longer fresh.” However, there are some wonderfully fresh and talented voices that emerged from the Qing, notably the romantic poetry of Wu Weiye, the gorgeous ci lyrics of Nalanxinde, the spiritual, witty verses of Yuan Mei, and the sad, bitter, but beautiful boudoir lyrics of Wu Zao, one of China's finest female poets.

  JI YINHUAI

  (seventeenth century)

  Ji Yinhuai, also known as Mao Lu, was born in Jiangnin, Jiangsu province. She was the sister of Ji Yingzhong (1609–1681), another Qing dynasty poet, and learned how to write poetry from her brother. She wrote a collection entitled Deeply Cold Hall Poetry, but she stopped writing when her husband, Du Ji, was killed during the Manchu invasion of the city. She lived in poverty with her children for over thirty years. Her line “Nesting ravens and flowing waters highlight autumn” was highly praised by Wang Shizhen.

  Improvised Scene Poem

  Plum blossoms, a lonely village,

  water flowing past a few cottages.

  Against the setting sun no one is seen,

  just an ox lying in the wheat field.

  WANG WEI

  (c.1600-c.1647)

  Wang Wei, also known as Xiuwei, was an orphan from Yangzhou who made her living as a courtesan at the end of the Ming dynasty. Among China's most accomplished women poets, she was deeply involved in the literary life of her time. After years as a courtesan she married a man named Xu Yuqing. Later she converted to Daoism and became a nun, taking the name “the Straw Cape Daoist.” Well known as a traveler who wrote accounts and poems about her travels, she edited an anthology of travelogues titled Records of Eminent Mountains.

  To the Tune of “Drunk in the Spring Wind”

  Lover, who coaxed you to get drunk before me?

  The window is cold beyond the lamp

  and instead of holding me you lean the lute against the fragrant drapes

  and sleep, sleep, sleep!

  You forget how to be tender.

  All you want

  is the taste of being drunk.

  I'm sorry I asked you that riddle about shoes.

  It delayed our tryst in the mandarin duck quilt,

  so when I asked if you'd taken off your clothes, you said

  “No, no, no!”

  Even a goddess

  parting from her lover

  wouldn't be able to let go of your sleeve.

  FENG BAN

  (1602.-1671)

  Feng Ban was born in Jiangsu province. Out of loyalty to the Ming dynasty, he pretended to be insane when it fell to avoid having to work for the new administration. He set himself in opposition to his contemporaries, disdaining the Jiangxi School of Poetry and the poetics of Yan Yu (1180–1235), who had celebrated poetic revelation and sudden enlightenment and viewed the poetry of the Tang and earlier dynasties through the lens of Chan (Zen) Buddhism. Feng Ban preferred a realistic, educational, didactic application of poetry.

  A Poem in Jest

  In this world the rich and powerful are hooligans,

  e
verywhere locking up good flowers behind red doors.

  But women's dreams are difficult to control.

  They can travel at will to the far edge of the sky.

  WU WEIYE

  (1609–1672)

  Landscape painter, scholar, poet, and official, Wu Weiye, also known as Wu Meicun, was from Taicang and was a tutor in the Imperial Academy in Nanjing. He passed the imperial exam in 1631. Though he originally considered committing suicide upon the fall of the Ming dynasty (he decided not to after his family interceded), he eventually went to work for the Manchus of the Qing dynasty. He wrote a history of the rebellions that led to the fall of the Ming, a work that was banned, along with the rest of his writings. He lost his official rank in a tax scandal in 1661.